Our conversation will be led by Dr. Maruša Bradač, who is an Associate Professor of Physics at UC Davis. If you’ve ever wondered what exactly “dark matter” is, and how scientists think about and study the origins of the universe, then this is the science café talk for you!

Bradač was a Hubble Fellow at University of California, Santa Barbara, and spent time as a postdoctoral research associate at Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) in Stanford, California. She received her PhD at University of Bonn, Germany, and is a native of Slovenia.

The tools of Bradač’s trade are telescopes in space (Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope) and on the ground in Hawaii (Keck). But if you’re doubting how telescopes and cosmology can make for a fun cocktail-hour conversation, here’s a taste of Bradač’s passion for dark matter, galaxies, and IKEA bookcases, filmed at TEDxDavis in May 2014: